UK pay gap among worst in Europe

UK pay gap among worst in Europe

The pay gap between men and women in Britain is one of the worst in Europe, but this is not the fault of employers, a government-appointed commission concluded today.

A report by the Women and Work Commission made 40 "business-friendly" recommendations aimed at boosting pay and opportunities for women after it found that women were paid on average 17% less than men. The gap among part-time workers was 38%, it found

Tony Blair responded to the report, which he commissioned in 2004, by appointing the culture secretary and minister for women, Tessa Jowell, to produce an action plan to take up the recommendations.

But the report has angered trade unions and equality campaigners by failing to call for companies to carry out compulsory pay audits to ensure that women are not paid less than men.

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The equal pay charity the Fawcett Society said the report had "short-changed a generation of women."

John Cridland, deputy director general of the Confederation of British Industry and one of the 15 commissioners, said the pay gap was "absolutely not" the fault of employers.

Instead, the commission focused on poor careers advice for girls in schools. Mr Cridland said he was "staggered" at how poor the guidance was in secondary schools.

Speaking at a news conference to launch the report, he said that by concentrating on the most disadvantaged children, school careers services had "degraded" the quality of advice to the majority of boys and girls.

The commission calculated that the economy was losing up to £23bn a year because women's talents were being wasted.

"Many women are working, day in, day out, far below their abilities," the commission chairwoman, Lady Prosser, said.

She added: "This waste of talent is an outrage at a time when the UK is facing increasing competition in the global marketplace, and an outrage for those women personally.

"If we do not make the fundamental change necessary to our school and workplace cultures, those new jobs and opportunities will be filled in the same old way, and women will continue to lose out."

The report pointed out that countries such as Sweden and Denmark had much lower pay gaps despite having similarly high levels of female employment.

Diana Holland, national organiser for women, race and equality at the T&G union, was disappointed by the report.

She said: "Being a woman still means being paid less - a quarter less than men ... Without pay audits, employers will be vulnerable to thousands of individual, costly equal pay cases."

Recommendations included "innovative" schemes to give schoolgirls a better understanding of pay and prospects in different careers, as well as improved training for women returning to work after having children.

Work experience should also be transformed so as to encourage girls to consider non-traditional jobs and to promote apprenticeships for women in professions where skilled workers were in demand, the report said.

It found that "women's" work was undervalued, with jobs in caring, cleaning and catering being less well rewarded than "men's jobs", such as labouring or driving, that required similar levels of skills. The commission urged the government to back a £20m package to raise skill levels among women and help them change careers.

Its report said: "We found no single, easy solution or magic bullet. Rather, we identified a set of solutions which, taken together, will lead us towards a fairer society and a more efficient economy."

Dr Katherine Rake, the director of the Fawcett Society, said: "These measures alone will not bring change quickly enough for women up and down the country who are currently being paid too little.

"If this government wants to go down in history as having closed the pay gap, it is going to have to try a lot harder.

The report came on the day the Conservatives admitted they were wrong to suggest the only place for young mothers was in the home.

But the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said it was equally wrong of the government to make mothers feel guilty if they opted to look after children rather than work.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006